Writerly Ways

This week I wanted to talk about being disappointed in ourselves and what we’ve accomplished in our writing. We’ve all been there. We’ve missed a deadline. We’ve dropped out of a ficathon. We’ve turned in something that we knew we didn’t spend enough time on and later regret it. I’m standing at the precipice of this in many different arenas right now.

So I was wondering how everyone else dealt with this. There are many ways of dealing, of course, several of them bad. We could wallow around in pity and then drag ourselves back out and get back at it. We could wallow and just stay there, giving up entirely. We could look rationally at how we spent our time and why we failed and figure out what we could do different next time.

I think one of the things that keeps us from falling into these pits in the first place is having a good support system. A writers group, for one, though those can often be viper pits if you choose poorly, or wonderful if you choose well. The one I’m in now is in between those extremes. It’s a bit too open, and too numerous so I find myself reading genres I would rather gouge my eyes out than read or have to struggle to find time to read it all. Also because it’s so big we have long deadlines so it takes literally years to get through one novel and really, that’s not as helpful as it could be.

I’ve give thought many times to reopening nanomowhinging and keeping it very small with shorter word counts to make it more useful. I know I’ve had interest in that but this year time is something that eludes me.

I belong to prompt groups and to groups that cheer me on. Those are all well and good but in my experience they don’t compare to a few good (and honest) friends who really will be rough on your work (that’s where the honest comes in) and will be there with the cattle prod to get you moving. silvrethorn is making herself accountable on a daily basis on FB, several of us are doing the same on gsd_rtfn. I’m always on the look out for someone willing to read/critique my stuff in exchange for like services.

I AM feeling bad about my writing right now. I don’t feel like I’ve done all I could. I feel like I’ve let opportunities slip past me and I don’t like it. I’m still trying to find better ways of doing things which is one of the reasons I run this column in the blog on a weekly basis. You all help me be better and I hope I could do the same for you.

Right now skinny little Soul is sitting on the arm of the chair leaning on me. He thinks he's helping (granted he's mostly in the way of me typing). In way he is, he's keeping my arm warm from the drafty window.

Also check this out, in Jana's journal, a really neat look at Fantasy (thanks to my friend ES)

yearly count

8066 / 75000 words. 11% done!

Geek love -

2679 / 8000 words. 33% done!

Scarred Soldier

1742 / 8000 words. 22% done!

Both of these stories are in serious danger of missing deadline

Until the Ice Breaks, Splinters of Silver and Cold Iron, Machiavelli Moon, Riding with Strangers all untouched. You can see why I'm disappointed in myself.

My cats might be smarter than I thought and weight off

So I ended up not getting much done today but I DID go back to Jackson to pick up things I forgot (and still forgot one), took pictures of the for sale homes (more later) and used up the 8$ coupon I had for CVS pharmacy which just so happened to have a cat toy I've been looking for, one of the wooden boxes with holes in it that they fish things out of.

I think it honestly took them less time to figure out how to get the stuff out than I did (granted it was all in a bag that I had to fish out as a unit...) In fact of the 6 items inside the box they've already lost 4. I keep putting the mouse and one remaining (non-jingling) ball back in. They do love it. It was only 2 bucks after my coupon.

They also woke me up at 6 AM by racing thru the house destroying everything I own. sigh.

Okay so I took pictures of the relative cheap houses Mom found and sent them plus several others on the street and nearby ones (ALL of Jackson is for sale, that's not a good sign). Dad was like um are ALL the houses this old and so close together? Isn't there anything like from the 1960's with a hint of a yard'

Now you know my pain Dad. yes but most of that is outside of town and liquid propane and that was costing me 500 a month 7 years ago. THanks but no (it might be better here since it isn't as cold as WI and I don't remember what it cost in FL but I think only the hot water tank and oven ran off that)

I did find this house. I will call to see what it cost. I know it's out of my price range and is more in town than I want to be but it's within walking distance of my favorite pizza place and the library. ELD is already planning to move to hell here to take up part of it.



The one rule is we must keep it clean (HA)
Seriously considering this one The only downside is, I already know it's at the outer limits of my range. The one thing I don't like about this realtor over others is that it doesn't tell me what projected payments would be a month. I don't want to waste their time. Just found out a friend of mine's granddad works for them though

So weight off...it's HARD to tell if I'm losing weight because apparently my scale sucks. It says I'm gaining but the doctor's office has me down as losing 5 pounds since last time. I'll go with that over the walmart scale. So maybe I'm down 5 pounds. I DO have recipes this time. I had an Asian styled dinner tonight and it was good.

( Hot & Sour soup )

The soup is from Weight Watchers and could be completely vegetarian if you switched out the chicken broth for veggie. If you wanted to put in the pork to make it more traditional I leave it to you to figure out the calorie/fat count. It is missing some more traditional things but I'm sure you could add in scallions for instance without adding much to the calories.


( Beef & Broccoli )

This was from my Diabetic cook book. I think next time I'll make slightly more marinade and maybe spice up the whole thing a little more but it was pretty good. You could eliminate the noodles and drop the carbs if you wanted.

meme

got this one from enemytosleep

Let's play a little game called Trip, Save, Shield. Comment to this post and I will give you three characters. Then you reply to tell me who you would Trip, who you would Save, and who you would use as a Shield in the zombie apocalypse.

Also, feel free to give me three characters if you want.

she gave me Falman, Breda and Fuery

Trip - Falman, the one guy in the group I know with a bigger brain than me so the zombies can feast.

Save - Fuery, he knows electronics that might save us later, besides he's cute

Shield - Breda, because he's pretty bad ass.